


his

by peet4paint



Category: Mansfield Park - Jane Austen
Genre: Blasphemy, Bondage, Dark, Domestic Violence, F/M, Gags, Non Consensual, Spanking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-24
Updated: 2011-12-24
Packaged: 2017-10-27 23:41:34
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,038
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/301350
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/peet4paint/pseuds/peet4paint
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fanny always thought of Edmund as hers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	his

**Author's Note:**

  * For [clare_dragonfly](https://archiveofourown.org/users/clare_dragonfly/gifts).



> Huge thanks to River for betaing despite a dead computer (RIP, River's computer).
> 
> Sorry this doesn't include Henry. Or any remotely appropriate-to-era language. Hopefully the dirtybadwrong sex makes up for it.
> 
> Blanket warnings: This is extremely dark. It's also extremely irreligious. And it contains spousal abuse, and bondage, and non-con with a foreign object. If you are easily triggered by any of these things, don't read this. Please.

Fanny always thought of Edmund as hers. Growing up he was her dearest friend. As an adult, he was the one her heart spoke to.

Once they are married, Fanny realizes the error of her ways.

It is not that Edmund changes overnight. It is slower, more subtle, until Fanny cannot tell if Edmund is changing at all. Instead she begins to worry he has been this way all the while—that, instead, it is her perception of him that changes.

“You ought not say such things, Fanny,” Edmund says, listening to her idle musings. “People will think I have no control of you at all.”

Or he says, “Fanny, if you do not eat more of your own free will, I shall have to feed you myself.”

When he does, sitting her down in his lap, lifting fork and spoon to her lips like she is a small child, Fanny feels the shame light her face into a hot redness.

“Fanny, come here,” Edmund will say of an evening. Fanny does not move fast, she never has. She does not move fast enough for Edmund.

If they are in company, he will grab her wrist, fingers tight on her skin. “Take care to heed me in the future,” he will say low, for her ears alone.

If they are not in company he will take her over his lap like a child and mark her bottom until it stings.

She is not certain which she prefers. Either way ends with bruises and tears.

Some days Edmund finds fault in her needlework. He says, “A pity you could not be more capable,” and he uses the needlework in a manner it was never intended. He binds Fanny’s wrists together. He says, “Thus you will be prevented from further flaws.”

These days are unpleasant, sitting with her hands bound in front of her for hours on end, unable to do anything more useful than pet poor Pug. After the bindings come off, her wrists ache, and her shoulders ache, and she takes to her room for the rest of the day.

Edmund does not care for parties, but on the rare occasion they dine in company he inevitably stares at her from across the table the entirety of the evening. Feeling his eyes on her, Fanny goes mute, unable to respond to her dining partners.

Balls are worse yet, Edmund sending dark glances at Fanny any time a man so much as approaches her. The one time she had accepted, directly after the marriage and before she had understood, Fanny had not been able to sit for a week.

But the worst, the absolute worst, are the nights.

Before marriage Fanny had known what every young lady knows, that a marriage bed is a sacred place where a husband will take pleasure from his wife.

She had not known that meant horsewhips.

There are rings on the marriage bed, large metal rings. Sometimes they have silk attached to them, sometimes rope. Sometimes there are metal chains attached.

Fanny likes the metal chains least. They bite into the skin so; leaving red pinches and bites along her arms.

There are whips and flogs and paddles that turn her skin rosy then red. There are clamps for her chest and braces for her legs, spacers to leave her spread and helpless.

Some nights he pushes himself into her, into the tightness of her body, and moves until he spends himself in her. Those are the better nights.

The worse nights—the worse nights come after he says the evening mass. Those nights he comes to bed still robed, collar stark against the paleness of his face. Those nights he sounds like another person.

“Sometimes,” he says, spilling wax from a taper along her belly, “sometimes I look at you, Fanny, and I see God.”

Fanny curves, body arcing away from the heat. She tries to cry out, but the cloth tied over her mouth stops her words, keeps them in.

A slap lands on her thigh, a hard bright pain in the dimness of the room. “And sometimes I see you for the whore that you are.”

There are ceremonies after that. He spills holy water over her body, blesses her and damns her at one time. And then comes the cross.

It is large, a foot tall or more, and thick, thick as Fanny’s wrist. It is rough, hewn by a farmer or a tradesman on an empty winter night.

And it is painful.

He pushes the cross inside her, forces it inside her. “If you are to have God in you again, I shall have to put him there,” Edmund says, pushing harder, faster.

Fanny cries. Her body shakes with heaving sobs she cannot quite get out around the gag.

Edmund shoves the cross inside her over and over until her body snaps, convulses, pain and something else making her tighten for an endless moment.

And then the moment is over and Edmund is removing the cross from her. “While they were eating, Jesus took bread, gave thanks and broke it, and gave it to his disciples, saying, ‘Take, eat; this is my body’,” Edmund says. He lifts the cross to the light, runs a finger across the wetness, the spending from her body.

Edmund moves up the bed, begins to untie the bindings from Fanny’s mouth. He says, “Then he took the cup, gave thanks and offered it to them, saying, ‘Drink from it, all of you. This is my blood of the covenant, poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins’.”

He looks at Fanny, then back at the cross. “Do you think this is what he meant?” he says.

He lifts the gag away.

“Please,” Fanny says, almost against her will.

“Hush now Fanny,” Edmund says. “It is time to eat of his body, time to drink of his blood.”

He slides the cross into her mouth, pushes it past teeth that bite into wood.

“I can see it, the way God transforms you,” Edmund says, forcing the cross deeper. “You are lit up with the Holy Spirit, my own light to brighten the dark places.”

It only makes sense. She is his after all.


End file.
